Are there diseases in space?

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1:06So the first thing we're going to do, we're going to put the hairnet. Okay, so hairnet on. This is just like what I would describe as a dinner lady hairnet, right? That's it. Yeah, yeah. The people use for cooking. Okay, cool. Hello and welcome to CrowdScience from the BBC World Service. The show that will do whatever it takes to answer your science questions. Including looking faintly ridiculous. And then we're going to carry on with this suit here. Just grab one? Yeah, just grab one. OK. They sort of remind me of like shell suits people used to wear. I'm Anand Jagatia, and the outfit I'm putting on has a serious purpose.

1:39It's not there to protect me. It's there, in theory, to protect an entire planet. And I'm wearing it because of a question about space from one of our listeners, George in Nairobi, Kenya. My question for crowd science is, are there diseases in space or other planets? That's such a great question, George. I'm just wondering what inspired you to send this in? Where did this question come from? OK, I've been watching some movies and some documentaries about some planets having the ability to support life. And one of the biggest challenges that we have had, at least here, is so many diseases. And so my worry was, do we have these diseases in those other planets if there was a possibility of people to live there?

2:25Right. So it's like if we sent humans to Mars, for example, could humans who go there be at risk from diseases that we don't have on Earth? Or maybe the same sorts of diseases we have on Earth, but they're vulnerable to when they touch down on these other planets? Yes. It also makes me think that if we're sending like probes or rovers and things like that, and then they come back to Earth, what if they pick up diseases from space that are kind of different to what we have on Earth? And then maybe they put humans at risk here. Yeah, so I think if really these people, they went to Mars or in the moon or any other part of the space, they came back with these kind of microbes or diseases that could cause death in the populations of the world, then I think it could be very much tragic.

3:11Thanks for your question, George. So are there infectious diseases in space? Could we be at risk of catching alien illnesses if we travel to other worlds? And could we unwittingly bring them back to Earth and spark a pandemic on our home planet? Here on Earth, we know that contagious diseases are caused by microbes like bacteria and viruses. So how likely is it that they could exist out there? Oh, hi there. I'm Dr. Michaela Musalova. I'm an astrobiologist. And my specialty is studying life in extreme environments. Michaela is an astrobiologist searching for life in space, who's been a commander on more than 30 simulated missions to the Moon and Mars, with NASA and its European equivalent, ESA.

4:02I'm trying to understand what the limits of life are here on Earth. And that can then help us potentially find life elsewhere because we know the limitations of life as we know it. And then we can identify places in our solar system and beyond that have similar conditions and therefore some possibility for life to exist there. And what you're touching on there really is that space itself as an environment and also planets that are in our solar system, they don't have the cushy environment that we have here on Earth that can sustain life, right? They're kind of quite harsh, inhospitable places.

4:37Yeah. So what kinds of life forms do we think might be able to survive in some of these hostile environments? The most likely organisms are simple life forms like bacteria. And many of them can survive in space for an extremely long time. And many of them go into a spore form. That is the main way they're able to survive radiation in particular. and so when they go into the spore form it's a type of dormancy and what happens is they create this thick protective shell in the cell. The DNA gets like packed really tightly and protected by special proteins which in a way work like seatbelts so they hold the DNA in place because radiation tends to break the DNA down into small particles.

5:28I mean the fact that bacteria can go into these very, very hardy spores is kind of incredible. I mean, how long do we think that bacteria, say, might be able to survive in conditions like space? So some theories are that bacteria could potentially survive, at least in these spore forms, for potentially thousands, maybe even millions of years, but that's very hypothetical for now. We've only been able to test it for a few years on experiments on the International Space Station. Some of the research I was focused on was trying to extrapolate this to tens of thousands of years. And we were actually able to see that if in theory this is correct, that microbes, very sturdy ones or hardy ones, if they're able to revive themselves approximately once every 10 ,000 years or so, they could even survive living on the surface of Mars today.

6:27and they would just have to get into a safe enough situation where they're not exposed to too much radiation or other dangerous factors on the surface of Mars, wake up, you know, repair all the damage that has happened to their cells while they were dormant or, you know, less active. And then they could go back into kind of more of a dormant or less active state for another few thousand years and they should be okay. But of course, you know, we can't know for sure because we haven't been testing it for that long. So if we think about George's question then, you're saying that a bacterium could be a good candidate for a microbe that survives in space and they could also make us ill.

7:08So what sort of a risk is there that we could actually get an infectious disease from space? So, you know, it's always important to be careful and I always say rather safe than sorry. So in theory, if there are microbes in space, like on Mars, we should definitely be very careful if we bring any samples back. And that's called backwards contamination. And backwards contamination would be if we collect a sample from Mars, bring it to Earth, and then we could contaminate Earth with Martian microbes if they are dangerous to us in some shape or form. Yeah. How seriously do NASA and other sort of space organizations take the idea that there is a small chance that there could be microbes on other planets or in space that we bring back to Earth?

7:58Oh, it's taken pretty seriously. I think, you know, with the, for example, the Mars sample return mission, there was a mission that was planned to do that. But sadly, that one has been postponed for some time. But they were definitely planning on having special types of, you know, containment labs on Earth where the samples would be stored and tested first before there's any chance of it contaminating our planet or causing any damage. So there could be microbes out in the harshness of space. We know that there are microbes on Earth that are incredibly tough, potentially surviving for millennia by forming protective spores.

8:39Michaela mentioned plans for missions to Mars in the near future, which might use rovers to bring back Martian material for us to study here at home. And they could pose an infection risk. So are space agencies really prepared for that possibility? Yeah, very much so. So we take really seriously this kind of question. This is Silvio Cinebaldi. He's a man with a job title that makes him sound like a superhero. Planetary Protection Officer at the European Space Agency. And when NASA was planning their sample return missions to and from Mars, it was Silvio and his international colleagues that had to figure out how it could be done without compromising the health of Earthlings.

9:22Yeah, so there are two levels of consideration that we are taking. One is the actual sample that are being retrieved on Mars. So for that, we have like a containment of a containment of a containment, so three layers of containment. But then we also look at particles that could potentially cross-contaminate the exterior of the spacecraft. So we didn't want the particle that could potentially cross-contaminate the outside of the spacecraft to even go close to the atmosphere on Earth. NASA hasn't had to put any of these measures into practice just yet, as that plan to return samples from Mars has been postponed.

9:57But it's something space agencies around the world are taking seriously for future missions. But listener George asked about whether people travelling to the Moon or Mars might be at risk of contracting infections. Well, it turns out if you're an astronaut, you might get sick long before you touch down on another world. And that's what we'll be looking at. This is summer at its peak. Whole Foods Market Summer Fruit Fest is your invitation to eat the season. Fresh, organic, and bursting with flavor. Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt. Build a grazing board with fresh fruit, prosciutto, and artisanal cheese.

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11:48Next.

11:51You're listening to CrowdScience from the BBC World Service. I'm Anand Jagatia, and this week we're on a mission to answer a question from listener George in Kenya. Could there be life out there in space that could make us sick? We've heard that microbes are amazingly hardy and have the potential to survive in extreme environments like the surface of Mars. But when it comes to space, that's not the only place they can be found. What are all those microbes on the walls, on our equipment, on our laptops, on our clothes when we're in space? This is microbiologist Kate Rubins, currently a professor at Stanford University in the US.

12:32She started out as a regular virologist until... I was working on a grant one day and one of my friends called me and said, Kate, there's astronaut applications online. Didn't you want to be an astronaut when you were a kid? So I applied, not thinking that they would take a virologist, but as it turns out, there's a lot of interesting science in space that we can do around microbes. And Kate's done plenty of it herself. As a NASA astronaut, she spent 300 days on the International Space Station doing microbiology in microgravity. One of the first experiments that we did was actually sequencing DNA in space.

13:06The entire impetus for doing the DNA sequencing in space was microbial. So previously, if we had something growing on the wall, or if an astronaut had an infection, you'd have to wait until a spacecraft was undocking from the space station. And we'd take that sample, put it in a spacecraft, burn it through the atmosphere, and then somebody would pick those samples up and go to the clinical lab and grow them up on plates to identify. Ferrying microbial samples from the space station back to Earth for analysis wasn't exactly easy or practical. The problem is a spacecraft only undocks every three or four months.

13:43And so if you have a bacterial infection, you need an answer within a day or two. And so we were very concerned about not having a way to identify the microbes. And so sequencing was something that we could do quickly without having to bring an entire clinical microbiology testing laboratory up to space, which would be very difficult. But it's not just the microbes on the walls or the equipment of the space station that Kate is interested in. She's also been researching the ones that the astronauts on board might already be carrying inside them. The viruses that you carry in your body can actually reactivate on the space station.

14:20Kate wanted to understand more about a virus that causes a disease called shingles or herpes zoster. It's the same virus that causes chickenpox or varicella in children. But in adults, the disease is much more serious. For most people, shingles is never a problem, as the virus tends to remain dormant inside them. But puzzlingly, again and again, astronauts, who are incredibly fit and healthy, seem to be getting ill with the disease. So, what's going on? To have a really healthy 30 or 40-year-old get shingles might mean that the immune system's compromised, because that shingles virus is from chickenpox when you're a child, and it just kind of hides out.

15:02And until you're immunocompromised or you're getting older, it doesn't really cause anything. But since we were seeing these shingles eruptions, we knew that probably the immune system was a little bit compromised and that this virus had woken up and was reactivated again. So when we did some studies to find bits of that viral DNA or RNA, we were seeing in anywhere from 40 to 60 % of the astronauts had the shingles virus or other viruses in the herpes virus family. So is it that being in space might somehow change your immune system and therefore make people more vulnerable to infectious diseases?

15:37Yeah, absolutely. You know, we see this in a lot of astronauts. We started doing additional studies on the immune system, and we found that the immune system was a little bit dysregulated and depressed in space. And so NASA's concerned about viruses in the future or bacteria in the future, because you might not be able to fight them off. So we do a lot to prevent that. And we, in the 25 years of space station, we really haven't had an issue besides some of these dormant viruses. So it seems that just being up in space somehow disrupts the immune system, making it more vulnerable to infection. And that's before you've even reached your destination.

16:14But what about all those microbes that Kate sequenced on board the space station? Could the environment up there be altering their biology too? Well, the microbes are very unique in terms of their ability to sense their environment. They're single-celled organisms. And what's around in the environment, that's everything to them. And so they're very sensitive to things like stress. And the spaceflight environment, the microgravity environment, is filled with a lot of stress. Fluids behave differently. You've got some radiation up there. There's all kinds of new environments. And so it's a little bit concerning because we have done other studies with bacteria, which demonstrates that they turn on some more virulent genes.

16:57So they become a little bit more pathogenic. So it's something that NASA is definitely keeping their eye on. It's a risk area. Are some of these issues going to be even more relevant as we try to do longer lasting missions or missions to further away planets in space? Absolutely. So the current program is talking about sustained lunar missions where we're going to the moon and we're staying for longer. And that really changes the medical care aspect because on the space station, if somebody has a problem, we can send the crew home and get them to medical care within 24 hours. When you start talking about the moon, that's five days away, which doesn't sound like a lot.

17:36But if you have a raging infection, really could be a problem. So we need to think more carefully about what diagnostic equipment and what medical supplies we send up, various kinds of antibiotics and those sorts of things. The story really changes when we start talking about Mars, because for that mission, it's going to be two and a half years. And once you burn your engines to go to Mars, you're not coming back. So I think this research is going to be increasingly important as we talk about longer missions. So, George, you wanted to know if future missions to the Moon, Mars or beyond could put astronauts at risk of contracting infectious diseases that they might bring back to Earth.

18:15We don't yet know if microbes exist on other planets, but it's a possibility. However, we do know that the harsh space environment itself seems to make us more susceptible to infection. We've also heard that planetary protection is something space agencies take very seriously, and if samples ever return from somewhere like Mars, there'll be measures to quarantine them from the rest of Earth until they're deemed safe. But there's something else we need to consider here. What about the flip side to George's question? What if we are the ones who are infecting the rest of the solar system? It's something astrobiologist Michaela Masalova thinks about whenever she sees a rocket taking off.

19:015, 4, Engine Ignition 2, 1, 0

19:10NASA's 300 million mile journey from America's shore to Jezero crater on Mars, the Red Planet. I keep my fingers crossed for the astronauts or the payload or whatever that's being launched into space. But I am fully cognizant of the other payloads that could be on that spacecraft, like microbes hitching a ride to places like Mars. And I do always wonder, you know, are they going to survive the journey? Are they going to survive this other alien environment? And what became of these microbes? In exploring other planets, could we be delivering microbes from Earth into the depths of space? We have been sending all these different probes to Mars that are trying to study whether the conditions on Mars were ever favourable for life to be there.

20:01But at the same time, because we're sending things from Earth to Mars, it is almost certain that there are some microbes that have been able to, quote unquote, hitch a ride all the way to Mars. And they could even be there today. And so, you know, if we do find life on Mars one day, we'll have to actually first check that this isn't something that is a contaminant from Earth. While it's unclear whether life exists in the rest of the solar system, we know it exists down here. So how can we avoid contaminating other planets? Well, it all starts with the shell suit and hairnets you heard me putting on at the top of the show.

20:40It's mandatory gear for entering the facility we are about to see in the south of England. Airbus Defence and Space. It's an ultra-clean factory where spacecraft and payloads are assembled for launch. All clean room. The basic concept is minimising cross-contamination that generally comes from the outside world to the inside. I'm back with Planetary Protection Officer Silvio, trying to put covers over my shoes without letting them touch the floor. And it's harder than it sounds. What you need to do is pay attention on not touching any dirty surfaces. without being too strict here but um so i've already just you just have i failed by already letting mine touch the floor so so you you you need to first of all it's the other way around right so that's a bad start yeah all right okay so that's on now can we go in yeah of course please

21:34whoa okay this is really cool so so we've just walked through into basically like a big what looks like a big aircraft hangar, it's like a big warehouse but the walls are all kind of white and around us well it's like the fanciest mechanics workshop you've ever seen. That's right it's like a mechanical workshop but clean. This is where we are building part of the spacecraft and go to space and the reason is because we want to avoid the so-called false positives so these are the incident that can happen when you search for life on Mars for example and you bring bacteria from Earth and then you will screw up completely your investment, your mission that was aimed to search for life.

22:18And also if you think about that, it's also responsibility aspect because you want other missions in the future to go to the same region or the same planet and be able to make science without being compromised by us previously. Okay, so it's really important to make sure that the stuff you send to other planets doesn't have any microbes on or isn't contaminated with life? No, exactly. So first of all, let me say that it's impossible to have zero microbes because we live in a world of microbes on Earth. So all we're trying to do is minimising that contamination and making sure we don't have organisms that can proliferate on other planets.

22:55So in doing so, obviously, we need to take lots of measures. So you will see how we do that in a minute. Cool, yeah, let's go and have a look. Okay. Silvio takes me to another clean room, which is even stricter than the one we've just been in. In fact, we're not allowed in. But from a window, I can see someone working in a biosecure suit that looks much more cumbersome than what I just had to wear. We watch as he walks around with tools in his hand, working meticulously while a team of engineers is speaking into his ear from behind a pane of glass. Watching all this next to me is engineer Paul Meacham.

23:30For 14 years at Airbus, he led the build on the ExoMars rover project, which is scheduled to launch an autonomous vehicle to Mars in 2028. The ExoMars rover is a European mission to look for signs of past or present life on the surface and under the surface of Mars. Now that the rover itself, named Rosalind Franklin after the scientist, is finished, the team here is building the landing platform that will touch it down safely on the Red Planet. So it's the first time anyone's ever taken a drill to Mars before to take samples from up to two metres below the surface, because that's where we think there could be a sort of an ice layer.

24:06And if our assumptions about life are correct, we expect to find some indication of past or present life in that layer. How does the way you design something like this have to take into account the principles of planetary protection that we've been talking about? It starts with material choices, because we don't want to take an organic-based material with us, and that be detected by the instrumentation and think that it was actually signs of Martian life. So we can't use anything which is organic in origin, such as rubber. Instead, for example, the wheels of the rover have to be metallic and yet still behave like a rubber tyre would in terms of the squiddiness, the compression, but without using it.

24:46I mean, it just really highlights how much of an undertaking it is to make sure that as much as possible you're not taking anything with you into space to somewhere like Mars. What kind of numbers are we talking about? Presumably you can't get it completely sterile, or can you? No, I mean, there's always going to be the reality that nothing will be perfect. What we tend to talk about is terms of number of bacterial spores that are on the surface. So to give you an idea, the rover was required to have less than 10 ,000 bacterial spores across the complete surface, which you'd normally find on sort of an eighth of a pinhead.

25:24It's a ridiculously small amount and actually through all the processes you see here the material choices the sterilization processes we actually achieved 10 % of that number so less than what you would find on a pinhead on earth is what you are able to detect across the whole of the Mars XO rover yeah every part of the surface or every nook and cranny that they could hide has to be inspected and checked and that was the number we came up with which when you compare to the millions of spores that we shed every 24 hours. We have to maintain that level of cleanliness, not just in the initial build, but throughout the entire test campaign over many years.